TEKS 8C: Calculate percent composition and empirical and molecular formulas.
Interwar Social Change
TEKS 8C: Calculate percent composition and empirical and molecular formulas.
Objectives
•
Analyze how Western society changed after World
War I.
•
Explain how some people reacted against new ideas
and freedoms.
•
Describe the literary and artistic trends that
emerged in the 1920s.
•
List several new developments in modern scientific
thought.
TEKS 8C: Calculate percent composition and empirical and molecular formulas.
Terms and Places
•
flapper – young woman who rejected the moral
values of the Victorian era in favor of new,
exciting freedoms
•
Prohibition – a ban on the manufacture and
sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States
•
speakeasies – illegal bars where alcohol was
served during Prohibition
•
Harlem Renaissance – African American
cultural awakening
TEKS 8C: Calculate percent composition and empirical and molecular formulas.
Terms and Places (continued)
•
psychoanalysis – a method of studying how the
mind works and treating mental disorders
•
abstract – a form of art composed of lines, colors,
and shapes, sometimes with no recognizable
subject
•
dada – artistic movement that rejected all
traditional conventions
•
surrealism – an art movement that attempted to
portray the workings of the unconscious mind
TEKS 8C: Calculate percent composition and empirical and molecular formulas.
What changes did Western society and
culture experience after World War I?
Society and culture were shaken by the experience
of the war. This reaction occurred in Europe, the
United States, and many other parts of the world.
In science, discoveries changed what people
understood. These shifts were mirrored in music,
literature, and the fine arts. The world had
changed, and the culture that existed before World
War I no longer seemed to fit this new world.
TEKS 8C: Calculate percent composition and empirical and molecular formulas.
During the 1920s, new technologies changed the
way people lived in the world.
These
included:
•
Affordable cars
•
Improved telephones
•
Motion pictures
•
Radio
•
Labor-saving devices
such as washing machines
and vacuum cleaners
These advances helped create a mass culture.
TEKS 8C: Calculate percent composition and empirical and molecular formulas.
Jazz emerged in the United States in the 1920s.
•
This new form of music combined Western
harmonies with African rhythms.
•
Nightclubs and the sounds of jazz became
symbols of freedom.
•
Jazz attracted young people who rejected
Victorian values. The 1920s became known
as the Jazz Age.
TEKS 8C: Calculate percent composition and empirical and molecular formulas.
Women enjoyed new opportunities.
French flappers model
the new shorter skirts.
•
As a result of their war work,
women in many Western
nations won the right to vote.
•
More woman worked outside
the home and more careers
opened up for women.
•
Labor-saving devices gave
women more leisure time.
•
Flappers, who embraced jazz
and new freedoms, became a
symbol of rebellion against
Victorian values.
TEKS 8C: Calculate percent composition and empirical and molecular formulas.
Some people reacted against new freedoms and ideas.
Many Americans
favored Prohibition.
A constitutional
amendment in 1919
banned alcohol.
Under Prohibition,
organized crime and
speakeasies flourished.
The amendment was
repealed in 1933.
A rising Christian
fundamentalist
movement supported
traditional values and
ideas about the Bible.
John T. Scopes was
convicted of breaking a
Tennessee law that
banned teaching Darwin’s
theories about evolution.
TEKS 8C: Calculate percent composition and empirical and molecular formulas.
Postwar literature had a different focus than
Victorian writings.
•
Wartime experiences led some authors to portray the
modern world as spiritually barren. Writers such as
Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald were dubbed
the “lost generation.”
•
Writers such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf
experimented with “stream of consciousness,”
portraying the workings of the inner mind without
imposing logic or order.
•
African American writers of the Harlem Renaissance
expressed pride in their unique culture.
TEKS 8C: Calculate percent composition and empirical and molecular formulas.
New artistic movements rejected realistic
representation of the world.
• Abstract art focused on
lines and colors rather
than recognizable subjects.
• Dadaism sought to upset
traditional conventions by
using shocking images.
• Surrealism attempted to
portray the inner workings
of the mind.
An abstract painting by Russian
artist Vasily Kandinsky
TEKS 8C: Calculate percent composition and empirical and molecular formulas.
Scientific discoveries changed the world and
challenged some long-held ideas.
•
Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, and Enrico Fermi
increased understanding of the atom. Their work would
later lead to the development of atomic energy and
nuclear weapons.
•
Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, the first
antibiotic, which is used to combat many diseases.
•
Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud introduced new
theories about the unconscious mind. His use of
psychoanalysis changed perceptions of the mind.
TEKS 8C: Calculate percent composition and empirical and molecular formulas.
The trauma of World War I propelled many people
to change the way they thought and acted during
the turbulent 1920s.
•
Science, medicine, politics, art, music, and
architecture drove this evolution.
•
At the end of the 1920s, the “lost generation”
would face a new crisis in the form of a worldwide
economic depression.